I have a old Dell Inspiron 1300 running Mint. To avoid the hassle of solving all of the problems, I am going to install a new copy of Linux Mint. How do I do this?

Step 0 is to download the Mint Documentation .pdf in your favorite language: https://linuxmint.com/documentation.php

Step 1 is "Download the ISO" as described in the Documentation.

Step 2 is "Read the Release Notes" as described in the Documentation.

Step 3 is "Verify the ISO" as described in the Documentation.

Step 4 is "Burn the ISO to DVD" as described in the Documentation. (Note: You can also burn the ISO to a USB thumb drive, instead of a DVD, if you prefer.)

Step 5 is "Boot the Live DVD" as described in the Documentation.

Step 6 is not official Mint advice, but rather my personal opinion, "Snowpine's advice" so you choose to listen to me or not: DO NOT INSTALL MINT YET! Rather I recommend to use Mint in Live mode, try without installing, for at least a couple of days, perhaps even a week or two. This will allow you to determine, 1) does Mint run well on my hardware? and 2) do I like Mint, will it meet my needs as a user?

Finall, if you have completed Steps 0-6 successfully, and you are satisfied Mint is the best operating system for you and for your computer, then...

Step 7 is "Install Linux Mint on Your Hard Drive" as described in the Documentation.

Good luck, be patient and follow the directions carefully, and please let us know if you have any questions along the way.

Oh dear, I just googled system specs for Dell 1300. I am not optimistic Linux Mint will run well on such old hardware. Please spend lots of time on Step 6, to make sure Mint runs well on your hardware, before you jump ahead to Step 7, installing on the hard drive.

If you're on an older machine, consider using a less resource-intensive flavour of Mint such as Mint 18.1 MATE or Mint 18 Xfce (Mint 18.1 Xfce is not out yet but will be soon, and there will very probably be an upgrade path to it).

1 members found this post helpful.

Great advice!

Some other recent discussions about Linux for old hardware:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...op-4175596785/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...op-4175596867/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...mb-4175596716/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...rs-4175449680/

I am going to put down what I have to do so that I don't screw anything up with this. Download the ISO. Read the release notes for my OS. Burn it to a DVD. Verify the ISO. Take the disk and put it into Dell Insprion 1300. Try it out in live mode. Install when satisfied.

Two questions:

Can you burn a disk with an average disk drive or do you need a special drive?
When you go to pick the edition, will Linux Mate be an option?

1. any drive capable of burning CDs will do, but most .isos are larger than 700MB these days. so maybe you'll need a dvd? or can you write to (and boot from) a usb instead?
2. yes.

Usually you verify the ISO immediately after you have downloaded it. If there have been any problems during the download, you don't want to waste a DVD burning a faulty ISO to it.

If you want to download the MATE 18.1 ISO, see here: https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

Which program will you be using to burn the ISO to the DVD?

Also, is there any information at all on your existing older version of Mint that you need to save before you write over it with a new install? Do you know how your disk is currently partitioned?

I will be using the program that comes with all Windows 10 computers. I saw Gimp as one of my programs; I want to save that. I do not know how it is partitioned.

Gimp will be available in your new install. Of more concern are any data files that you've produced - do you have any of these that you want to keep?

Ok, if you don't know how it is partitioned then you're probably ok using the whole disk for Mint, which will be one of the options. I assume in saying this that you have no other operating systems installed on the machine.

It looks as if the Windows 10 burner takes care of properly writing ISOs. Remember to tick the "Verify disk after burning" checkbox.

I have not used the Dell 1300 long enough to create any files as I was waiting until it actually has Internet. Also, I am confused on how to verify the ISO on windows.

Are you installing 32-bit or 64-bit Mint? The reason I ask is so that I can direct you to the exact info you require.

I am installing 32-bit.

Agreed... That is an antique. The Hard Drive (80gig) and the CPU (1.6ghz) seem doable. However, did I read right it has 512mb of RAM? You're probably not going to get any of the traditional desktops to run very well on that, IMO (unless you've upgraded it to around 2gig, then it would be serviceable).

A machine that old, I personally would start w/ an LXDE release of something. I would probably start at whatever the current version of Lubuntu is. Mint is based on Ubuntu, so if you have a basic understanding of Mint, you can use Lubuntu.

If that doesn't work well for you, I would probably give strong consideration to switching to antiX Linux, which is based on Debian Stable (again very similar to Ubuntu and Mint, as it's what they are based on).

Okay I will try Lubunto. Also, when I get the chance, I am going to rename this Dell 1300 to The Little Pterodactyl that Could.

Can someone give me a link to the Lubunto download?